Printing press promoting extremism seized

A group of 8 Yemeni men accused of supporting the al-Huthi tribe’s armed rebellion against the Yemeni Government has been held in the southern harbor of Aden, official sources said on Thursday.

“The 8-member cell was running a  printing press for printing and distributing leaflets promoting the dark, backward, and terrorist ideas of al-Huthi,” A spokesman for the ministry of interior said in a statement. The printing press was seized by the authorities, the spokesman added.

The men were running the printing press with the purpose of distributing publications promoting extreme, marginal Shiite ideology called Ethna Ashari,
 

which says rulers of Islamic nations must be decedents of the prophet Mohammed.   

The 8 men were among those wanted by the security authorities, whose pictures and names were given out to security checkpoints on charges of supporting the al-Huthi armed rebellion in Sa’adah.  

Late last June, also 8 leading rebellion supporters were arrested in Al-Jawaf, Sana’a, and Amran provinces as part of the crack-down by the government on supporters of rebel leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi. 

Meanwhile, the US embassy in Sana’a refused to classify the al-Houthi rebels as terrorists, saying that classification of terrorist groups is a very complicated process which needs to based on hard evidence. “Until now, such evidence does not exist in this issue,” said an embassy statement published in Al-Sahwa newspaper on Thursday.    

The embassy also expressed in that statement its concerns over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Sa’adah because of the armed conflict between rebels and government troops. It urged the two warring parties to secure the food, water, and fuel necessary for the civilians being affected by the war.

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